Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021): 369-373

Book Review

Daniella Talmon-Heller. Sacred Place and Sacred Time in the Medieval 
Islamic Middle East: A Historical Perspective. Edinburgh Studies 
in Classical Islamic History and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh 
University Press, 2020), x + 279 pp, 28 illustrations, 1 map, index.  

ISBN 978-14-7446-096-5. Price: $105.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper).

Kader Smail 
University of Maryland, College Park

(ksmail@terpmail.umd.edu)

Over the last two decades, Daniella Talmon-Heller has published widely on religion and social practices in 
the medieval Islamic world. Recently, she 
edited a remarkable volume that sought 
to integrate material and textual evidence 
for the study of the medieval and modern 
Middle East.1 The book under review inau-
gurates a new theme. At the intersection 
of history, anthropology, and religion, 
Sacred Place and Sacred Time in the 
Medieval Islamic Middle East examines the 
dual issues of sacred place and sacred time 
while surveying the development of rites 
associated with them. The book is divided 
into two parts. The first part studies 
the sanctification of the martyrdom of 
al-Ḥusayn, Muḥammad’s grandson and 
ʿAlī’s second son, through the construc-

1.  See Daniella Talmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the 
Zangids and Ayyūbids (1146–1260), Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Daniella 
Talmon-Heller and Katia Cytryn-Silverman, eds., Material Evidence and Narrative Sources: Interdisciplinary 
Studies of the History of the Muslim Middle East, Islamic History and Civilization 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

tion of two shrines, in Ascalon and in 
Cairo, that purportedly hold the head of 
the martyr. The second part investigates 
the month of Rajab, the seventh month of 
the Islamic calendar, whose sanctity, both 
acknowledged and disputed by genera-
tions of scholars, was characterized by 
truces, pilgrimage to the sanctuary of 
Mecca, ritual slaughter, fasting, prayers, 
and supplications. The geographical scope 
of the book is for the most part restricted 
to Egypt and Palestine; the period consid-
ered extends from Fatimid Ismāʿīlī rule 
(358–567/969–1171) to the Mamluks (548–
923/1250–1517). 

The author convincingly demonstrates 
how the shrines of al-Ḥusayn and the 
month of Rajab were venerated, how the 
rites performed in public were promoted 

© 2021 Kader Smail. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, 
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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

370  •  Kader Smail

by rulers, and, most importantly, how 
old beliefs and practices were adjusted 
to fit changing historical circumstances. 
Talmon-Heller draws on a large variety 
of narrative sources, both Sunni and 
Shiʿi, and frequently combines them with 
material ones. Authors such as Nāṣir-i 
K h u s r a w  ( d .  b e t w e e n  4 6 5 / 1 0 7 2  a n d 
471/1078), al-Bīrūnī (d. ca. 440/1050), Ibn 
Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266), and Ibn Taymiyya  
(d. 728/1328), to name but a few, provide 
a broad spectrum of travelogue, historical, 
a n d  l e g a l  l i t e r a t u r e .  I n  a  d e t a i l e d 
historiographical discussion (“The State of 
the Art”), Talmon-Heller offers a survey of 
modern scholarship, especially on sacred 
spaces. She notes the relative scarcity of 
works on time; most such works, according 
to her, deal primarily with scientific 
computation of the hijri calendar rather 
than with calendars as cultural artifacts  
(p. 19).

This discrepancy is also reflected in 
the book’s structure, which raises a few 
issues. While its two parts are roughly of 
the same length, the first contains eleven 
chapters, five of them excursuses, whereas 
the second consists of seven chapters and 
three excursuses. As the author explains, 
t h e  e x c u r s u s e s  a i m  t o  “ s u p p l e m e n t 
the narrative of each part of the book, 
digressing from the main plotlines in 
order to elaborate on a number of themes” 
(p. 6). Yet, given their similarities, two 
excursuses could have been merged with 
the preceding chapters (chaps. 4–5 and 
6–7). Two others merely list treatises in 
praise of Ascalon and the sacred months 

2.  Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Sheed 
& Ward, 1961), 39–51.

3.  Victor Turner, “The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal,” History of Religions 12, no. 3 (1973): 191–230.

in Islam without building on what might 
have constituted a solid working basis 
for a more substantial discussion (chaps. 
9 and 20). Finally, an excursus on Saladin 
and al-Ḥusayn in Palestinian folklore 
teleports the reader from medieval times 
to the twentieth century but contributes 
little to the general discussion (chap. 
11). Inevitably, this organization creates 
a serious imbalance between the two 
parts, which is exacerbated by the eight 
excursuses.

With regard to content, the book’s 
e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l  f r a m e w o r k  i s  w e l l 
defined and particularly welcome in an 
often theory-poor field. For the reasons 
explained above, the emphasis here is 
exclusively on sacred spaces. Talmon-
Heller considers what a sacred space is and 
what can be inferred from its geographical 
location. In response to the first question, 
she offers an overview of Mircea Eliade’s 
concept of axis mundi: “Every microcosm, 
every inhabited region has a center, that 
is to say, a place that is sacred above all,” 
says Eliade, and this place symbolizes the 
connection between heaven and earth or 
the higher and lower realms.2 Talmon-
Heller then turns to the second question 
and discusses Victor Turner’s theoretical 
model of pilgrimage, commonly referred 
to as “the center out there.” Turner 
noticed the remoteness and distinctness of 
many popular pilgrimage sites from socio-
political centers.3 Finally, Talmon-Heller 
presents and largely adopts Erik Cohen’s 
continuum approach between Eliade’s 
and Turner’s centers, which throws new 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

Daniella Talmon-Heller’s Sacred Place and Sacred Time  •  371

light on the anthropological study of 
pilgrimage. 4 Succinctly, according to 
Cohen, pilgrimage sites are either “formal” 
or “popular” centers, and several criteria 
determine where they are to be placed on 
the spectrum. In Talmon-Heller’s words, 
these criteria are 

the observance of formal Islamic 
devotions vs. the use of relics and ritual 
objects; sponsorship by the political or 
religious establishment vs. initiatives 
“from below”; and the availability  
(vs. absence) of entertainment and 
commerce at or near the site. The 
“excessive” presence of women was 
often regarded—especially by men of 
religion, and sometimes also by ruling 
authorities—to indicate a deviation 
from proper and “serious” religious 
activity (p. 11). 

In the case of al-Ḥusayn’s shrine, the 
pilgrimage site is initially a popular center, 
then eventually becomes a formal one. 

Talmon-Heller argues that the shrine 
where al-Ḥusayn’s head was buried in 
Ascalon was possibly a burial place of 
decapitated Christian martyrs in the early 
fourth century CE (p. 62). Little is known 
about Ascalon between the fourth and 
eleventh centuries CE; churches were 
built and destroyed, and a mosque was 
constructed in 155/771–72. More than 
three centuries later, in 484/1091, the 
Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamālī (d. 487/1094) 
commissioned a long inscription on a 
minbar found among the ruins in Ascalon 
that commemorates the discovery of 
al-Ḥusayn’s head (p. 46). Apart from 
this source, the evidence associating 

4.  Erik Cohen, “Pilgrimage Centers: Concentric and Excentric,” Annals of Tourism Research 19, no. 1 (1992): 
33–50.

al-Ḥusayn’s head with Ascalon postdates 
the Fatimid-era inscription. Talmon-Heller 
acknowledges this lack of evidence. What 
is also lacking from her audacious and 
fascinating history in the longue durée 
is twofold: on the one hand, there is no 
historicization of al-Ḥusayn’s memory; 
on the other, there is no attempt to make 
sense of any of the twelve sites the book 
identifies that commemorate the voyage 
of the head throughout the Middle East. 
B o t h  o f  t h e  i g n o r e d  p h e n o m e n a  a r e 
connected to the Battle of Karbalāʾ and, 
more specifically, with the shaping of the 
memory of this tragic episode.  

In an article on the memorialization of 
Karbalāʾ, Antoine Borrut demonstrated that 
this episode, which was “often reduced, 
in fact, to a police operation directed 
against a rebel refusing to acknowledge 
caliphal authority,” was remembered 
differently under the Umayyads and the 
Abbasids. During the reign of the former, 
historical information circulated primarily 
in Medina and Kufa, where the ʿAlids’ 
memories were preserved. The traumatic 
memory of the defeat and assassination of 
the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad 
was subjected to caliphal repression of 
the ʿAlids, while pro-Umayyad discourses 
favored strategies to silence the episode or 
deflect blame onto local actors. During the 
reign of the Abbasids, the ʿAlids became 
the victims and martyrs in whose name 
the Abbasids were “seeking vengeance and 
legitimacy” and whose memory was to be 
gradually revived. The redemption of ʿAlid 
memory, as recalled by Borrut, seems to 
have followed the paradigm suggested by 
Stephen Humphreys: covenant, betrayal, 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

372  •  Kader Smail

and redemption. Thus, “the redemption 
process starts early, chiefly with the 
Tawwābūn, but is not complete until 
Ḥusaynid memory has been redeemed 
in ʿAbbāsī sources,” after nearly two 
centuries.5 

To return to the book under review, 
it seems clear that a shrine visited by 
Sunnis and Shiʿis alike must commemorate 
s omething meaningful for both. The 
history of the process leading to this 
shared practice is missing from the book.6 
Similarly, with respect to the numerous 
shrines commemorating the voyage of 
al-Ḥusayn’s head, one wonders to what 
extent these sacred places, which are de 
facto sites of memory, are part of the long 
process of redemption and of the sacred 
g e o g r a p h y  c o n t r i b u t i n g  t o  A s c a l o n ’ s 
prestige. 

In the second part of the book, the 
author examines the month of Rajab, 
the rites associated with it, and their 
evolution between the first/seventh and 
ninth/fifteenth centuries. Celebrated in 
Arabia before the rise of Islam, Rajab was 
connected to the springtime festivities 
of the peninsula and the ban on warfare. 
Although it goes beyond the scope of 
the present work, this phenomenon is 
somewhat reminiscent of the “peace 
and truce of God” (Pax et treuga Dei) in 

5.  Antoine Borrut, “Remembering Karbalāʾ: The Construction of an Early Islamic Site of Memory,” Jerusalem 
Studies in Arabic and Islam 42 (2015): 249–282 (quotations from pp. 249, 269, 271); R. Stephen Humphreys, 
“Qurʾānic Myth and Narrative Structure in Early Islamic Historiography,” in Tradition and Innovation in Late 
Antiquity, ed. Frank M. Clover and R. Stephen Humphreys (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 
271–90.

6.  On the same topic, see Stephennie Mulder, The Shrines of the ʿAlids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is and 
the Architecture of Coexistence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), chap. 2.

7.  See Hartmut Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 
20 (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1964); Thomas Head and Richard Landes, The Peace of God: Social Violence and 
Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Dominique 
Barthélemy, L’an mil et la paix de Dieu: La France chrétienne et féodale, 980–1060 (Paris: Fayard, 1999).

Europe during the Middle Ages, a topic 
that has generated a rich scholarship.7  
A comparison of the two environments 
(and other non-Western contexts) remains 
to be done. For several generations, 
Talmon-Heller argues, the Rajab visitation 
of Mecca was an individual practice. 
In the fourth/tenth century under the 
Fatimids, however, it became a formal 
public commemoration in Egypt and 
northern Syria. The Fridays of the month 
were marked by special sermons given in 
the presence of the ruler (p. 155). From 
this point onward, Rajab took on a new 
dimension. A new communal devotion, the 
prayer of great rewards (ṣalāt al-raghāʾib), 
surfaced in Jerusalem around the fifth/
eleventh century (p. 183). The Mamluk 
sultan Baybars (d. 676/1277) incorporated 
the procession of the kiswa and the 
maḥmal into the annual caravan that 
left Cairo for Mecca in Rajab 661/1263  
(p. 206). Liturgical texts were produced 
to frame religious practices during Rajab.  
As in the case of al-Ḥusayn’s shrines, some 
medieval scholars—exclusively Sunnis—
argued against the sanctity of Rajab; in this 
specific case, they pointed out the absence 
of evidence designating certain days as 
“special.” Besides the very descriptive 
approach of this second part, its main 
weakness lies in its disconnection from 



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Daniella Talmon-Heller’s Sacred Place and Sacred Time  •  373

the first one. Indeed, visiting al-Ḥusayn’s 
shrines in Rajab confers no additional 
merit. The Karbalāʾ episode, for instance, 
offers the opportunity of studying the case 
of Muḥarram, which is, like Rajab, one 
of the four sacred months of the Islamic 
calendar. The month of Ramaḍān could 
also have been an excellent choice. 

Yet this potential weakness is also, 
paradoxically, a strength insofar as the 
reader can read one part or the other 
without losing the common thread of the 
book. In the “Final Comment” (i.e., general 
conclusion), Talmon-Heller points out  
that sacred place and time both aim  
to promote and develop humans’ sanctity 

8.  Arezou Azad, Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the “Faḍāʾil-i Balkh” (Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 2013); Yaron Friedmann, “‘Kūfa Is Better’: The Sanctity of Kūfa in Early Islam and Shīʿism in 
Particular,” Le Muséon 126, no. 1–2 (2013): 203–37; Harry Munt, The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early 
Islamic Arabia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Mulder, Shrines of the ʿAlids.

through rites. This element is what links 
the two parts of the book. On another 
level, the author identifies new avenues  
of research to be studied: on the one 
hand, the social dimension of festivities 
associated with sacred space and time 
c r e a t e s  n u m e r o u s  o p p o r t u n i t i e s  f o r 
philanthropy; on the other, large-scale 
patronage by rulers and members of 
the elite redefines the contours of local 
identities.

This book contributes another element 
to the field of sanctity in Islam alongside 
the contributions of Arezou Azad (2013), 
Yaron Friedmann (2013), Harry Munt 
(2014), and Stephennie Mulder (2014).8